National Museum of African American History and Culture grand opening Sept. 24, 2016.

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Meet Nick Pyenson, one of our paleontologists at the National Museum of Natural History. His job as a time traveler is to make discoveries about […]

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Jennifer Trask engages nature as both medium and subject matter, combining unexpected materials such as bone, vertebrae, butterfly wings, resin, metal, and antique frame fragments […]

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Steven Young Lee blends Eastern and Western traditions with anachronistic, often playful imagery and striking pattern in his porcelain works. His process allows the clay […]

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Click here to read more about the work of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory. The Smithsonian has been celebrating innovation in American culture for more than […]

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Ohkay Owingeh from Adventure Pictures on Vimeo. Currently featured in the exhibition “By the People” at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City […]

The post Restoration of the Ohkay Owingeh Tribe’s historic pueblo appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

What’s an Asian small-clawed otter’s favorite enrichment toy? Anything it can get its paws on! This species’ dexterous, partially-webbed digits are adept at feeling for […]

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The French-German border is littered with as many as 500 underground sites used during World War I. Researcher Jeff Gusky explores them and finds a […]

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Explore a “day in the life” of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the nation’s first collection of American art and home to one of the […]

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Smithsonian staff gathered on Thursday, June 1 outside the National Museum of African American History and Culture to show their support and listen to Director […]

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The history of African American music in the United States is the history of music in the United States. From Prince’s iconic musical blends to […]

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From lunch counters to bus boycotts, the African American fight for integration and equality touched every aspect of life. What you may not be familiar […]

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Ashkii, a North American river otter, at the Smithsonian’s National Zoological Park

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When it comes time to eat, Abyssinian ground hornbills pick up prey with their beak, toss it into the air and swallow it whole. But […]

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  Frances Glessner Lee created dollhouses with dead dolls. Her creations are now on exhibit at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

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The Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute’s newest female brown kiwi chick needs a name and you can help!

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Internationally renowned artist Mark Bradford will debut one of his largest works to date with “Pickett’s Charge,” a monumental new commission that spans nearly 400 […]

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Aymar Ccopacatty (Aymara), NMAI Artist Leadership Program (ALP) participant, tells his personal story of the environmental impact on Puno, Peru, of all-too-commonly discarded commercial plastic […]

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“Parallax Gap” transforms the Renwick Gallery’s Bettie Rubenstein Grand Salon into a visual puzzle. This immersive, site-specific installation explores examples of interplay between craft and […]

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A Guam rail chick hatched at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute Jan. 16, 2018. The chick hatched in an incubator and will be hand-raised by […]

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At the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, curator of arachnids and myriapods Hannah Wood has examined and analyzed hundreds of pelican spiders both in the field […]

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  Find your passion,” says veteran Astronaut Peggy Whitson. The Iowa native holds the record for time in space by an American. Learn all about […]

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 Inspired by Steampunk design, Richard Wilks talks about his larger than life 3-point mobile contraption. Through the merging of transportation and art, he created […]

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Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute MarineGEO Postdoctoral Fellow Maggie Johnnson outlines her research studying the effects of ocean acidification on marine coral near Bocas del Toro, […]

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Curator Taína Caragol gives you a tour of a portrait of the late sculptor Luis Jiménez by Gaspar Enríquez at our National Portrait Gallery

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Now that we have a deal between Time Warner Cable and CBS, we can turn our Hollywood focus back on the movie industry.

Steve Julian: Business analyst Mark Lacter, would you agree it's been an up and down summer at the box office?

Mark Lacter: It's been a flaky summer for Hollywood, Steve.  On the plus side, ticket revenue was up more than 10 percent, and attendance increased around six-and-a-half percent compared with last year (this covers the first week of May through Labor Day weekend).  The problem is that the studios and their investors spent huge amounts of money to make a lot of these movies, and they had to compete in a very crowded market - 23 big-budget films came out this summer, which is way higher than normal, and some of them never had a chance.

Julian: Some examples?

Lacter: Probably the biggest clunker was "The Lone Ranger," which could end up losing close to $200 million for Disney.  Another big disappointment was "White House Down," which was distributed by Sony and brought in only $140 million, which for a big-budget action film is really bad.  Even a film like "Pacific Rim," which did well at the box office, might still end up in the red because the production and marketing costs were so high.

Julian: And summer, of course, is the time when studios want to bring out these monster releases -

Lacter: - right, what they call "tent poles" - and in that category, the biggest winner was Disney's "Iron Man," which took in $1.2 billion.  Also having a great summer was "Monsters University" from Pixar, with $700 million.  You also had "Despicable Me 2" and "Fast and Furious 6," which might not be our cup of tea (speak for yourself, it takes me back to my police car days!), but did very well for Universal.  Eight of the top 12 films this summer were sequels - and yet, sequels were no guarantee of success (a number of them really struggled).  And, some non-blockbuster films found considerable success: "Now You See Me" from Lionsgate only cost $75 million to make.

Julian: So, in some ways, Hollywood was its usual unpredictable self.

Lacter: That's right - and don't expect any big changes in strategy when it comes to big-budget films.  The prospect of having huge success with one of these blockbusters is just too great, but perhaps more important is the fact that many of these films are financed by multiple groups of investors, and so the risk is spread around.  It's not like the old days when a studio bankrolled the whole thing.

Julian: Though, sounds like it's bad news for the city of Los Angeles: the "Man of Steel" sequel is going to be shot in Michigan?

Lacter: Mayor Garcetti has actually declared a state of emergency because the city keeps losing business to other states that offer big tax incentives to films - what's known as runaway production.  The truth is that business has been lost over the years, but L.A. is hardly in any danger of losing its spot as the center of entertainment.  And, you can see that with the L.A. County Board of Supervisors signing off on Disney's plan for a TV and movie production facility near Santa Clarita that will add more than a half-million square feet of studio space.

Julian: And, Universal's expanding, too.

Lacter: Earlier this year, Universal was given the approval to build more production facilities, and Paramount is planning an expansion, as well.  Now, these are all very ambitious projects - not the sort of investments that would be made if these studios were looking elsewhere to make movies and TV shows.  And, of course, they mean jobs - actually, employment levels in the entertainment industry have remained fairly steady going back the last decade.

Julian: Are there states that are pulling back their incentives?

Lacter: Yes, the state of North Carolina, which has been especially aggressive in using tax incentives to draw in movies and television going back to the 80s, is phasing out the giveaways because legislators have decided that the economic benefits aren't worth the tax revenues being lost.  And, other states with tax incentive programs are pulling back as well - they're finding that the payback is very difficult to measure.

Mark Lacter writes for Los Angeles Magazine and pens the business blog at LA Observed.com.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Across the country, the sale of electric cars is sluggish.

Susanne Whatley: But business analyst Mark Lacter, that's not quite the case in California...

Mark Lacter: Well, comparatively speaking, Susanne.  L.A. and San Francisco alone made up 35 percent of the electric cars sold in the entire U.S. during the first half of the year - 35 percent!  Keep in mind that statewide just 9,700 electric cars were sold in that six-month period, which translates to a little over 1 percent of all car sales in California.  So, they're not exactly lining up around the block, even in a region that's known for its early adopters.  Of course, electric cars were always going to be a tough sell -

Whatley: I've been driving one for about half a year now... and I absolutely love it.  But they ARE expensive, and I'm sure that's a factor.

Lacter: - and that's even after a federal tax credit, but they also require drivers to learn about recharging the battery - sometimes in not-very-convenient places - and, from a design standpoint, most of them don't stand out (one of the automakers that's now out of business had been selling what was a basically plain vanilla Mitsubishi sedan).  Now, the one notable exception is the Tesla - so long as you have at least $90,000 to shell out, and are willing to wait a while to get your car delivered.  In affluent sections of L.A., this is truly the hot car - just 600 or so Teslas have been sold in Southern California during the first seven months of the year.  It's also received rave reviews from all the big automotive publications.

Whatley: And perhaps most surprising of all, Tesla has been making money…

Lacter: That's right, although the stock price is ridiculously overvalued at around $20 billion (that's one-third the market value of General Motors, even though Tesla cranks out all of 21,000 vehicles a year while GM sells almost 5 million).  People seem to love this car almost in spite of it being battery powered, which gets us back to the challenges in trying to sell these things.  Elon Musk, who founded the company (he's also behind SpaceX and he co-founded PayPal), has managed to win over customers because the car itself is so much fun to drive.  The other makers of electric cars - not so much.

Whatley: So, for the folks still on the fence... might it be better to wait until driverless cars become available?

Lacter: That's going to be quite a wait, although all the automakers are working on their versions of self-driving cars.  The Mercedes people just announced plans to launch in 2020 - the same year that Nissan wants to bring out its car - and Google, which has had self-driving cars tooling around California for several years, is looking at 2017.  So, what we're seeing is real, but the question is what sort of real it'll turn out to be.  Certainly, the possibilities are nothing short of revolutionary - you're looking at, potentially, faster commute times because cars will be able to travel closer to one other (reaction times would be faster than with a human behind the wheel); in addition, fewer accidents and injuries (also a function of reaction times).  But, how well the vehicles work once they get beyond the testing phase is anyone's guess.  California does allow self-driving prototypes car for testing purposes, but that's far different than full-scale authorization.

Whatley: What if something goes wrong?

Lacter: That's one of the big concerns - liability, but the real issue is public acceptance.  Already, surveys are finding reluctance to buying a driverless car, or even having them on the road.  That's not a huge surprise considering how novel the concept still is - and all it takes are a few mishaps to affirm the skeptics.  All of which points to a lengthy transition period - not unlike the early days of the passenger plane, when most folks couldn't imagine getting into a flying machine.  Eventually, they got used to them, but it took time.

Whatley: And finally, some thoughts on Cal Worthington?

Lacter: Certainly one of the great showmen in the annals of L.A. broadcasting - Cal Worthington wasn't the first auto dealer to discover the benefits of commercials, but he lasted longer than anyone else, selling more than a million cars (that according to his count), and grossing billions of dollars.  The Worthington ads are sometimes considered the first infomercials - that might be a stretch, but three factors really made it all come together: Southern California's appetite for the automobile, the ease by which Cal could deliver his schtick (remember when he was strapped to the wing of a biplane?), and the fact that there was so much available air time to sell in L.A.. Definitely a legend in his own time.

Mark Lacter writes for Los Angeles Magazine and pens the business blog at LA Observed.com.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

The contamination of Foster Farms chickens has provided insight into food regulation.

Steve Julian: Business analyst Mark Lacter, had we been paying attention before this happened?

Mark Lacter: You know, Steve, we often have an out of sight, out of mind attitude when it comes to food safety, and - as we're seeing with this episode - the government has a way of enabling that attitude.  What stands out, first of all, is that people started getting sick from salmonella-contaminated chicken back in March, and yet, it wasn't until the past few weeks that news stories began appearing about the seriousness of the problems.

Julian: At last check, more than 400 people have been infected, with most of them in California...

Lacter: Right, and Foster Farms, which is based in Merced County, controls two-thirds of the poultry market along the West Coast.  No fatalities so far, but many of the people who became sick had to be hospitalized - and that leads to still more concerns that the salmonella strains were resistant to antibiotics.  Now, why it took this long for consumers to be made aware that there was a problem tells you something about the way the federal government regulates poultry plants.  It was only last Friday, after the company had seen a 25 percent drop in sales, when the president of Foster Farms decided to go public.  He said he was embarrassed by the outbreak, and promised to change the company's processing facilities so that salmonella can be better identified.

Julian: Where was the US government in this?

Lacter: Apparently, the Department of Agriculture only requires testing for levels of salmonella at the time of slaughter - not later on, after the poultry is cut into parts.  Foster Farms now says it will do retesting at that later stage.  What's also interesting is that Foster Farms was not asked to recall any of its products because the chicken is considered safe as long as it's handled properly and then cooked to the right temperature, which is at least 165 degrees.  That's why some supermarkets have kept carrying the brand.

Julian: Can the government even order a recall?

Lacter: Not in a case like this - and that's because of a court case in the 1990s involving a Texas meat producer that federal inspectors were ready to shut down due to a salmonella outbreak involving ground beef.  The company sued the government, arguing that salmonella is naturally occurring, and therefore, not an adulterant subject to government regulation.  And the courts agreed.  Foster Farms has been using much the same argument.

Julian: Why isn't there more public outrage over this?

Lacter: Well, again, we go back to out of sight, out of mind.  Slaughterhouses are not exactly fun places, and they're usually not well covered by the news media until something bad happens, like the Foster Farms situation.

Julian: Chino comes to mind - a story we covered.

Lacter: That's when an animal rights group used a hidden camera to record inhumane treatment of cattle at a meat processing plant.  That company was forced into bankruptcy.  Another reason coverage is spotty is because it's not always easy to trace someone's illness to a contaminated piece of meat or chicken.  And, that leads to lots of misinformation.  The broader issue is figuring out a way to monitor these facilities without the process becoming cost prohibitive.  The Agriculture Department has been pushing a pilot program that would allow plants to speed up processing lines, and replace government inspectors with employees from the poultry companies themselves.

Julian: The idea being?

Lacter: The idea being to establish safeguards that can prevent problems before they get out of hand.  But, this is pretty controversial stuff, and advocacy groups representing poultry workers say that processing lines need to be slowed down, not speeded up.  So, you have this ongoing back and forth involving industry, government, consumer groups, and labor organizations.  And unfortunately, most of us tend to move on after one of these outbreaks gets cleared up.

Mark Lacter writes for Los Angeles Magazine and pens the business blog at LA Observed.com.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

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Smithsonian scientists and colleagues, however, have recently found evidence that gymnosperm plants shared an intricate pollination relationship with scorpionfly insects 62 million years before flowering plants appear in fossil records.

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Visits to the Smithsonian's National Zoo just became a little bit sweeter with the arrival of a new honeybee colony. With a hive made of glass in the Zoo's Pollinarium and full access to the outdoors, these bees are showing off the wondrous ways of their world.

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New results from a massive study at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute show that interactions among community members play an important role in determining which organisms thrive.

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Flowers are usually associated with butterflies, but not the Dutchman’s Pipe (Aristolochia grandiflora). This deciduous vine, native to Brazil, has large flowers that emit an odor of decaying flesh, which attracts flies and beetles.

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Recent analysis using DNA sequencing of ancient Roman pills found aboard a ship that sank in Italy’s Gulf of Baratti between 140 -120 B.C, has revealed that the medicines consist of material from simple garden plants, namely carrot, radish, parsley, celery, wild onion and cabbage.

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The Center for Tropical Forest Science, which manages a global network of temperate and tropical forest research plots, will utilize the funds to conduct workshops in the Americas and Asia to investigate how taxonomic, functional, and genetic dimensions of diversity affect tree communities and their resilience to global change.

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Nearly 60 million years ago rainforests prospered at temperatures that were 3-5 degrees higher and at atmospheric carbon dioxide levels 2.5 times today’s levels.

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